* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:
- The UN Security Council resolution on Georgia, proposed earlier by Russia, reflected all the main Russian proposals on easing tensions in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia
- Russia and China opposed sanctions against North Korea at the UN Security Council
- The current crisis in the relations between Georgia and its self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia was due to Tbilisi's illegal actions in the Kodori Gorge
* Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN said, Russia intended to protest to a UN commission against the United States' move to deny a U.S. entry visa to Sergei Shamba, the foreign minister of Georgia's self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia
* Russia may use its Air Force in the event of a Georgian attack on Russian peacekeepers stationed in the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Russian Air Force commander said
* Russia's environmental watchdog said the entire ecological damage from the Sakhalin II oil and gas project in the country's Far East will be evaluated in late summer 2007
* Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said:
- Russia's fixed capital investment will increase by 28% in 2006, to $158.5 billion, and rise to $264.9 billion by 2009
- Russia's Stabilization Fund, established in 2004 to accumulate country's windfall oil revenues, will increase by 112% in 2006, to $93.3 billion
- Portfolio investment in Russia totaled $9.6 billion in the first nine months of 2006, representing a 10-fold increase from 2005
- He is concerned over excessive consumer borrowing in the country
* Anatoly Chubais, the head of the Russia's Unified Energy System, said the electricity monopoly would consider reducing the volume of electricity exports during the coming winter, to cover the domestic energy shortfall
* Russian chess grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik won the 12-game final match for the World Chess Champion title, against FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria in Elista, southern Russia
* Gazprom, Russia's state-run energy giant, has been authorized to develop two shelf natural gas deposits in the Kara Sea, beyond the Arctic Circle, the government press service said
* International ratings agency S&P said it raised Gazprom Neft's rating to BB+ from BB, Gazprom's rating to BBB- from BB+ with a stable outlook
* Russia will complete talks with the United States on its accession to the World Trade Organization in two weeks, Russia's economics minister said
* Members of the Joint Control Commission for the resolution of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict said they failed to reach a compromise, and the Georgian side has demanded an alteration in its format
* President Vladimir Putin said the amount of building and reconstruction of roads in Russia must be substantially increased
* Russia's environmental protection agency said it has uncovered serious infringements of environmental law by the country's largest crude producer, LUKoil, in the northwest Urals and west Siberia
* Russia's financial watchdog is planning to look into a production-sharing agreement on the Kharyaga oil field in northern Russia next year, the head of the Audit Chamber said
* Russia's Industry and Energy Ministry submitted to the government a draft law regulating the participation of foreign investors in Russian strategic enterprises, a government official said
